Nothing lasts forever, but your OEM’s lifespan estimate is wrong

Ask any OEM the average lifespan of their storage products, and they’ll tell you it’s between three and five years (usually closer to three). And this anecdotal figure has been repeated so often that most IT professionals agree – the best you should expect from your disk arrays is a half-decade.

A half-truth

There is some sense in assigning lifespans to your storage infrastructure assets. Over three to five years you will notice a decline in performance for instance. And older systems rarely offer the same data access speeds.

So for line-of-business operations, three to five years is a reasonable estimate.

OEMs take things a step further however. By imposing rigid limitations on their support offerings, they can force customers to upgrade, keeping them locked into a long-term repeat sales cycle.

EoSL does not mean end of life

When an OEM announces a product has reached end of service life, they are simply ending maintenance and support for that specific model. This declaration does not mean that your assets need to be replaced immediately.

Indeed, if EoSL hardware continues to meet business needs, there is no urgent need to replace it. Especially when third parties like CDS exist to provide OEM-class support, maintenance and spare parts for your assets. Third party support allows you to defer upgrades and save money, so you can replace systems when you decide – not according to your OEMs annual sales targets.

With a good storage hardware maintenance partner in place, your hardware may last twice as long as the OEM claims. And if those systems begin to slow down, you also have the option of redeploying them in another role.

Bust a myth today

CDS has a long heritage of helping customers extend the lifespan of their storage assets well beyond the OEM’s defined limits. To learn more about our services and how our clients are realising increased ROI, please get in touch.